Making the the VG-99 truly a live performance tool.


Open letter to Roland Corporation regarding the VG-99


From: Gary Heller



February 2010


While this document points out VG-99 flaws for live performance, it is absolutely not a product bashing exercise. I'm a real live performer with the VG-99 and there are features that would greatly enhance its acceptance by live performers if those features were present. My sole intent is to provide valuable feedback to the designers of the VG-99 so that it can be made infinitely more attractive to live performers and much more useful to me also. You have my permission to call me or contact me by email or regular mail.


To whom it may concern at Roland – a few facts to set the playing field:


What follows is my opinion based on my experience with the VG-99. I am tech-savvy and have excellent hearing so my critique of your product is probably more demanding than most. I offer the critique in the hope that the suggestions and requests in my epilogue be given serious consideration for inclusion/incorporation in a future firmware release for the VG-99, making it a much more useful product and a far more successful product line for Roland. This letter is not just a venting session. Please indulge me and read on. The bulk of this text comes from a product review that I posted on multiple web sites where musicians go to purchase instruments and equipment online. There are very few online reviews that express more than a bunch of words about what a great distortion effects pedal it is, in essence.


  1. This is an incredible piece of equipment in concept and execution, rendered essentially worthless by a few major failures on Roland's part. To produce a product that performs the functions that the VG-99 does is ambitious in the extreme and the brilliant minds at Roland have almost unbelievably achieved their goal except for the glaring failures mentioned in the text to follow. What a shame.

  2. This unit really does perform realtime processing of the guitar signal without any detectable latency – bravo on this score.

  3. The guitar samples are horrible. I have multiple guitars (Fender, Gibson, Martin, Takamine etc.) so I know what these instruments sound like through the same amplification that I use with the VG-99. When I compare the VG-99 samples to the real thing, they come up woefully short. In fact, the samples are so bad as to be only vaguely recognizable. A Fender Strat (Classic or New) only sounds “Strat-esque”, but nothing like a real Strat, and the other patches fare no better. Put a real humbucking pickup through the VG-99 and it sings. Put the humbucking V-Guitar through the same effects chain and its flat as a pancake. More on this later.

  4. The effects processing features are pretty good, and the Amplification modelers seem to be pretty good, but not great.

  5. The “user interface” is really a neophyte and really needs to evolve a lot more before the VG-99 could be adopted by more musicians. More on this later.

  6. The VG-99 Librarian computer software is really bad. Yes, I have the latest version.

  7. The price doesn't matter! I would gladly pay the price for the VG-99 (I did!) if it delivered what it promised, but, sadly, I could not recommend to anyone that they purchase this equipment for anything other than effects processing


While I could really rant on about the disappointing Guitar samples in the VG-99, I'd urge the VG-99 engineers and QA to simply pick any one of the Roland keyboard synthesizers/workstations and select an acoustic guitar patch and compare that sound to the sound produced by the VG-99 for an acoustic guitar. The synthesizer/workstation has an absolutely fantastic and realistic reproduction, while the VG-99 sounds pitifully flat and empty. And so it goes with all the VG-99 patches. Its not that the Strat/Rickenbacker/whatever patches don't sound like the actual instrument, its that they sound like the original instrument with all the dynamics, depth and color stripped out. Its as if the samples were taken from the pickups and then essentially filtered through a narrow frequency band with no high or low end. There's no “roll” or “round” sounding ring from the wound strings, and no zing from the plain strings. There are no harmonics. Actually, if you play an mp3 tune through the speakerphone on your iPod you have a not too dissimilar frequency band from the VG-99 samples. This example is quite exaggerated, but it should communicate what I'm trying to describe. It doesn't matter what your EQ or amp tone settings are – you can't amplify/decrease frequencies that aren't there in the first place. If these samples were fantastic, I wouldn't even care about the other VG-99 deficiencies. Enough on the lousy sounds.


The versatility of the VG-99 is the stuff of legends – there's ALMOST NOTHING you can't do with it! Selecting pickups, custom guitars, pickup-positions, tunings and on and on. Now, the problem here is that you have to either have a PHD or be retired (with oodles of time on your hands) or both to figure out how to use all this power. The user documentation and online help are worthless in terms of getting value out of this unit. I have personally spent so much time with the VG-99 and the more I learn the more I like it, but it is impossible for your average human being to have the time required to learn to get good results out of it. Roland must produce a set of Video Instruction workshops, online and on DVD/CD that come with the VG-99 that take owners through all of the basic features, each of the controls, settings and parameters, showing how each affects the final output. The learning curve is too steep, and the gratification and payoff too difficult to attain for musicians to persevere until the realize the benefit of the VG-99. I know more than one accomplished musician and entertainer that has struggled for 6 months or more and then finally given up, selling the VG-99 on eBay or in one case just giving it away out of sheer frustration.


If all you're doing as a musician is “shredding” or play this “metal” type of music then it pretty much doesn't matter, but if you're a discriminating musician and expect quality reproduction of those signature Strat, Tele, Rick, Humbucker et al sounds, you're going to be disappointed. I really thought that with the VG-99 I was going to be able to take just one guitar and the VG-99 to gigs, but after years of trying, I still need a real Strat, a real Tele, a real Gibson humbucker …


Enough of the VG-99's fundamental disappointments.


This next little section describes how I actually use the VG-99 in a “typical scenario”, which is as an entertainer. I would expect that other performers would appreciate the features that I mention here, especially if there were a workshop suggesting how to use the features as opposed to just what the unit can do.


As a musician and live performer you understand that you do not dilly-dally between songs. If there is a long silence between songs, you lose your listening/dancing public. Its a no-no. Discussing what to play next or fooling around with equipment settings, or even switching instruments results in unprofessional gaps in the performance continuity. Clearly the Roland engineers/musicians/product managers are aware of this and have addressed the useability of the VG-99. Its a good start, but I offer here some suggestions that would help me enormously and likely most other performers. In fact, I have already suggested some of these “features” to the VG-99 tech support team so that they could be relayed to Product Management in the hope of incorporation in the next firmware release.



  1. Guitar to MIDI – It can't be global, or system wide. It must be per-patch selectable. When I select a patch, I need that patch to turn the MIDI output on or off, and send a bank/patch select command to a MIDI device connected to the VG-99.

  2. The VG-99 Librarian software needs to be enhanced. For instance, when reading/writing patches it doesn't capture and display the “Category” information of each patch.

  3. Harmonizer needs to be Patch-centric, not system-wide. I have multiple songs I perform live using the harmonizer, and they are in different keys. When I select a patch, I'd like to have the key also change with the patch selected.

  4. The Librarian software needs to “read” and “write” the “Category” of each patch.


As a live performer, I typically perform around 40-60 songs a night. Lets say that I have a repertoire of around 120 current songs. So that I don't have to memorize a plethora of instrument, effect and amplification settings for these 120 songs, I have created a “User Patch” for each song, with the song title as the patch name. Sometimes the patch is as simple as my guitar's normal pickups straight through to the amp, but often there is additional processing. I have one User Category called “Songs” under which I have 120 “patches”. Each of these patches is a collection of all the settings (guitars, amps, pickups, effects etc.) for the song after which the patch is named. For instance, I have a ptch called “Year of the cat” - when I select this patch, all my settings are ready to perform that song by Al Stewart (Guitar A is acoustic and Guitar B is distorted electric). These patches/songs under the “Songs” User Category are sorted alphabetically, making it much easier to find a song and instantly get all the settings to perform it correctly. However, using the shuttle/wheel to scroll through 120 patches after every song is performed is still too time consuming, so I created another User Category labeled “Set List”. Then I copy the patches from the “Songs” category to the “Set List” category in the order in which they will be performed for a particular gig. Very practical idea – theoretically all I have to do now is increment the patch by one (using the wheel, the FC-300 or the GK-3 buttons) and in one second I am ready to go with the next number in the set list – right? No - not so at all! The VG-99 doesn't increment patches within the current category – only by numeric patch number! This means that I have to execute the following steps to get the next patch in my “Set List” category:

  1. Walk over to the VG-99

  2. Press the “Category” button next to the wheel

  3. Select the “Set List” category using the nobs or by pressing the buttons repeatedly

  4. Use the wheel to scroll up to the next patch

  5. Return to my microphone

This may not seem like a big deal until you have a 5-piece band and the drummer is counting in the next song while I'm still dialing up a patch and come in late, spoiling the start of the next song. So the valuable firmware enhancements that I'd like to see here are:

With these enhancements, at the end of a song all I would need to do is tap a button on my GK-3 and voila! I'd be ready to play the next number in the set list with no delays at all. Alternatively, you might add a feature called “Set Lists” where you can have multiple set lists which contain ordered lists of songs that “point to” specific patch numbers, whether preset or user.


The Guitar-To-MIDI switching also plays into this. If I need horns, reeds, strings or whatever in a certain part of a song, I'd like to be able to simply switch to another patch that has the MIDI output automatically turn on and send the appropriate MIDI commands to select the instrument I want. I can then drive the external MIDI device (SonicCell, Synthesizer etc.) from my guitar and instantly switch back by selecting another patch using one of my controllers.


The VG-99 has been endowed with the most fantastic abilities any guitarist could dream of. Too long we have envied keyboard players for what they were capable of producing in a live setting, and the VG-99 has gone a long way to leveling the playing field for we guitarists. If only these features were more useable in practice during a live performance. The features are still a little too hard to manipulate in live performance but incorporating some of my suggestions we'd all be that much closer the having it all. And from Roland's point of view, having musicians and performers raving online about how great it is would dramatically increase publicity, sales, profitability and the overall success of the VG product line.


Thanks for indulging me.

Gary Heller